


Humanity

by Before_i_sleep



Series: Where the Monsters Are [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Belonging, Character Study, Choices, Gen, Kid Fic, Stiles is called M in this, The OC is somebody who works for the Doctors as something of a recruiter, Theo and Stiles were friends when they were kids, Theo has problems, Theo-centric, There is something Theo lacks, also, and it sets him apart, bc I’ll always head canon that he didn’t start going by Stiles till after Theo left, but neither of them were happy kids, he’s always had problems, i literally have no freaking idea how to tag this but I am trying okay, it’s sort of an unreliable narrator?, not really but Theo is very much manipulated into joining the Doctors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 07:06:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12625773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Before_i_sleep/pseuds/Before_i_sleep
Summary: Theo Raeken never understood all the fuss about family. He’d never much liked his.ORTheo Raeken chose the path his life would take when he was nine years old.





	Humanity

Theo Raeken didn’t understand all the fuss about family. He’d never much liked his. Everyone said you had to love your family, and he was pretty sure that “love” was just “like” to an extreme. He didn’t see much to like about his family; it was rather boring. Dad worked a boring job, Mom had an equally boring job but was home more, and his older sister Tara was annoying. Even forgetting the jobs, Mom and Dad were boring people. There wasn’t any special connection between him and them; they just lived together. He was aware that his parents had taken care of him when he was too young to do so himself, but anybody could’ve done that.

He just didn’t like them. So how could he love them?

There was only one person he thought he might like that much: Mieczyslaw Stilinski. M was nice to him, but not condescendingly, which was rare indeed. He was the only one with whom he had shared his doubts about his family. M couldn’t really understand, because he loved his family even more than they deserved, but he didn’t judge either. That was more than anyone else would’ve done.

So Theo didn’t like his family. He wouldn’t realize this until much later, but that made him a prime target for a few mad scientists that just so happened to be in Beacon Hills around the time that he was nine years old. Not to mention the time he had his first real fight with M.  
They were kids. They were, for all their collective genius, just a couple of dumb kids. Theo was a kid with an anger problem, and M was a kid with a drunk dad, and they both had very, very different issues with their respective families. It was only a matter of time before their issues collided, and for kids as brash as them, that was bound to end badly.

Theo would forget the exact words eventually, but he would remember what it was about. M was sick of Theo throwing away his parents’ love like it was worthless (which it _was_ to him, but he knew M would’ve given anything for his dad’s love) and he snapped at him about it. Theo, being a nine-year-old, wasn’t thinking about _why_ M said that.  
He was thinking about the one sentence that he would remember, though. It was the last thing M said before Theo stormed off.

_”What’s wrong with you?”_

And that _hurt_ , because Theo had thought M was the one person who wouldn’t judge him for what he seemed to lack (he wasn’t exactly sure what that was, but he knew there had to be _something_ in everybody else that just wasn’t in him).

Theo went home angry that night, feeling betrayed and more alone than ever. He didn’t cool down overnight (he never did. No amount of sleep could take the heat off of his episodes of rage. It was always M who did that). He didn’t go to school the next day either, as he was approached that morning while waiting for the bus by his new neighbor. Mr. Roberts had befriended his family as soon as he moved in, but Theo could see through his sharp smile immediately. More importantly, he saw his sharp eyes and knew that Mr. Roberts knew that Theo was different.

Theo learned a lot that day. He and Mr. Roberts went to a diner instead of school (to this day Theo couldn’t tell you why he went with Mr. Roberts in the first place, but he did. The man was very persuasive). He learned he and Mr. Roberts were the same kind of different. He learned that people like them weren’t meant to be human. They were meant to be something else.

That was why Theo had always been unable to grasp some of the basest parts of human nature. That was why he was missing whatever it was he was missing. Because he was never supposed to have it in the first place.

That was why he didn’t love his family. Because he wasn’t born for a family. He was born for a pack.

And Mr. Roberts could help him become what he was meant to be. He had friends, doctors, who knew how to make a man into something else. Something _more_. They could fix him, cure him if his humanity, Mr. Roberts said. But first, he had to prove to them that he was ready. He had to prove that the human concepts of love and family truly eluded him. He had to kill his sister.

The idea of _belonging_ was something Theo had always thought just wasn’t for him. Because even with Stiles, his best and only friend, there was always a divide, always the stark knowledge of how very different they both were. But now, suddenly, it was an option. It was right in front of him, and all he had to do was reach out and grab it. All he had to do was kill Tara, who he didn’t even _like_ , much less love.

The path that Theo chose that day was not an easy one. It was not a good one. It was not a path that, looking back on it, he would wish on anyone. But it was his, and he had chosen it. He regretted leaving M; that much he knew. But would he make a different choice, if given a second chance? He would never know, because people don’t get second chances. They just get different chances. He would take some of those chances, pass others up, but in the end the only chance he cared about was the chance that he might go back to Beacon Hills, to M, one day, and make him a part of his pack. Because M may not be just like him, but he wasn’t like everyone around them either.

Theo met M for a reason. They would be pack one day. He would make sure of it.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfic I’ve posted on this site, and the first one I’ve written at all I’m quite a while. It’s also the first Teen Wolf fic I’ve ever written.  
> I wouldn’t say it’s great, but I enjoyed writing it, which is the whole point.


End file.
